Tending the Ache: Grief at the Second Gate

“Seek not love, instead,
seek and find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.” -Rumi

There are places within us that have never known love—parts of ourselves we learned to cleave off in order to be accepted, fragments wrapped in shame, buried in silence, or held in contempt. These exiled aspects of our being often show up as addictions, depression, anxiety, a lack of aliveness and vitality, and other persistent aches calling for our attention.

At Tending the Ache, we will journey into the Second Gate of Grief, turning toward the parts of ourselves that have long been cast out. Through expressive arts, ritual, and embodied practices, we will cultivate the medicine of compassion, gently welcoming back what has been lost. Drawing upon Internal Family Systems (IFS) and communal witnessing, we will soften the barriers to self-love, allowing warmth and acceptance to reach the places we have long kept in the shadows.

Join us in this sacred space as we listen, tend, and begin the slow work of reclaiming wholeness, held by the nurturing embrace of the foothills where the Piedmont Plateau meets the Blue Ridge Mountains. This scenic, rural setting, surrounded by farms and vineyards, offers a landscape that invites both spaciousness and grounding. The retreat center, Well of Mercy, is a place that feels like home—intimate, welcoming, and especially well-suited for the Second Gate’s deep and sometimes tender work with childhood wounds.

Nestled on 110 acres of beautiful land in Hamptonville, NC, our venue calls us back into relationship with the earth and with our own roots, offering the stability we need to restore what has been forgotten, silenced, or shamed. With space for just 20 participants, this retreat creates the conditions for meaningful personal transformation within a close-knit, supportive community, where compassion may flow freely, vulnerability is honored, and every voice may be heard.

Over the course of the weekend, we will explore:
• Personal and community ritual
• Breathwork and body-centered practices to deepen our trust in our emotional and body wisdom
• Therapeutic writing, inquiry, and small group work to assist in opening to our stories of loss
• The role of shame in grief and learning how to meet it with compassion
• Befriending our outcast and exiled parts, welcoming the fullness of our grief experience
• Practices to cultivate our capacity to be with our experience in a way that is spacious, curious, and heartfelt

As we practice the courage to be with the authenticity of our hearts, we enhance our capacity to embody a vibrant sense of aliveness and compassion. The beauty of this work is its capacity to expand into our communities and the world. This is a form of soul activism and what we are called to embody in this critical time.

           “What we don’t transform, we transmit.”
– Richard Rohr

We will begin at 4pm on Thursday, June 4 and conclude at 11am on Sunday, June 7.

To cultivate trust and containment, participation for the entire time is essential.

This retreat is for you if…

-You sense places within yourself that learned to survive without love, warmth, or reliable belonging.
-You carry a quiet, old grief that doesn’t always have words, but lives in your body, relationships, or sense of self.
-You’ve learned to be capable, attuned, or “the strong one,” and feel the ache of something tender underneath.
-You notice patterns of self-abandonment, over-functioning, or needing to be special in order to feel worthy.
-You feel drawn to grief not as something to fix or move through quickly, but as something to turn toward and be with.
-You’re tired of spiritual or psychological approaches that rush to healing, transcendence, or insight
-You long for a slower, more relational way of meeting grief that honors vulnerability, dignity, and complexity.
-You want to explore grief as a doorway into deeper self-belonging, rather than as pathology or personal failure.
-You are navigating a life threshold, relational loss, or inner reckoning that calls for tenderness rather than answers.
-You are a therapist, healer, or space-holder who senses the importance of tending your own unfinished grief.
-You carry ancestral, familial, or collective sorrow and feel ready to meet it with care and support.
-You want to experience grief in community, held within a grounded, ethical, and well-contained ritual space.

A gentle note
You do not need to know exactly what you are grieving to come.
You only need a willingness to turn toward what has been waiting for love.

PLEASE REGISTER ON TICKET TAILOR HERE

What’s included
• Two highly trained trauma-informed facilitators, one space-holder and two assistants
• 3 nights lodging
• Dinner on Thursday; continental breakfast, full service lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday; continental breakfast on Sunday; plus tea and light snacks throughout the weekend.

Pricing and cancellation policy
• $975: Single Room
• $875: Shared Cottage
• $775: Shared Room
See Lodging and Accommodations below for details. Registration will close by May 15 at 5pmor when the retreat fills to capacity. Due to the remote location of this retreat, commuter options are not available.

We recognize that this retreat is priced higher than some of our previous offerings, as it includes an additional night, allowing more time for rest, integration, and spaciousness within the work. Tending the Ache is an intimate, immersive experience designed for deep and tender engagement with the Second Gate of Grief. The extended time together supports a slower, more grounded pace as we work with multiple modalities, including parts work, to soften the barriers to self-love and gently tend to the exiled aspects of ourselves with care and compassion.

With a group size of just 20 participants or less, Tending the Ache allows for a more held and transformative experience. We deeply believe in the value of this offering and look forward to sharing this sacred space with you.

Optional Additional Night:

An optional additional night on Wednesday is also available for those who would like a personal “pre-retreat” arrival, at an added cost. This is highly recommended as a way to settle into the land, orient to the space, and arrive more resourced and grounded for the retreat. It also offers an opportunity to schedule a massage or Healing Touch session through Well of Mercy, should you wish to receive additional support before our work begins.

This extra night can be a beautiful way to begin the retreat experience with spaciousness, intention, and care.

Reach out to Well of Mercy if you would like to book Wednesday, June 3rd.

To help protect your investment and offer peace of mind in the case of unexpected changes, we strongly encourage you to consider purchasing travel insurance.

Scholarships:

If attending this retreat creates a significant financial hardship and you seek a scholarship or work-study exchange, please apply here. For scholarships, we prioritize applicants from historically marginalized communities, first responders, veterans, those in the helping professions, and students, and may cover 25-50% of tuition. Scholarship applications are due by April 15.

Cancellation Policy:

When registering for our retreats and programs, we ask that you are crystal clear on your intentions and commitment and consider your reservation and payment as a wholehearted YES to being here. We understand that things can come up that interrupt plans and schedules, but we also know from experience that when we prioritize this sacred work, we will move heaven and earth to honor our grief’s calling. Spaces to work with grief in community and through ritual are rare in modern western culture. In our retreats, we seek to create a community of shared values and embodied respect for the preciousness of this work.

We do, however, understand that some things fall outside of our control, and to this end we offer the following:
A 50% refund if you need to cancel before April 1 (minus registration fees).
A 25% refund if you need to cancel before May 1 (minus registration fees).
Unfortunately, we are unable to offer refunds after May 1

PLEASE REGISTER ON TICKET TAILOR HERE

                      “Healing comes  when we let ourselves be held by the love we were once denied.”
– Unknown

About the location

This retreat takes place at Well of Mercy, a beautiful venue nestled on 110 acres in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Located in Hamptonville and sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy, Well of Mercy offers quiet, homelike spaces for those seeking rest, renewal, and a pause from daily life through contemplation, connection with nature, and spiritual grounding. The grounds include a river, labyrinths, and nature trails that invite reflection and gentle wandering.

The closest airports are Greensboro (GSO) and Charlotte (CLT), each just over an hour away. We are happy to help connect participants who may be interested in carpooling from an airport or elsewhere in the region.

Lodging and Accommodations

• Single Rooms – with a queen bed and private bath on the ground floor of Sunset or Sunrise house; shared kitchen and communal screened-in porch.
• Shared Cottage – separate sleeping areas (one bedroom with a queen bed; living room with a daybed); shared kitchen, bath, and back deck.
• Shared Rooms – with a full and twin size bed on the top floor of Sunset or Sunrise house; private bath, shared kitchen and communal screened-in porch. Note: must be able to climb stairs, there is no elevator available.

Pairs or couples will register separately, but should note your roommate on the registration form. Note: we do not hold spaces for pairs or couples. If you do not register at the same time, a shared space may be taken by another participant.

What to bring
• A water bottle.
• A journal and pen.
• Items for the grief shrine and altars of support that are sacred and symbolic for you.
• Wear comfortable clothes and layers for when we are inside. Temperatures will be warm in early June. Please check the weather when you pack.
• Favorite snack(s) and any other creature comforts you may want to nurture yourself.

About your facilitators

To learn more about Samantha click here.

Summer Estes MA, LCMHC,

Summer Estes is a psychotherapist, group facilitator, and founder of Embodied Intelligence, a body of work devoted to tending the thresholds of the human experience—grief, transformation, and opening to presence. With nearly 20 years of guiding groups, retreats, and healing spaces, she creates transformative containers where people can bring what they carry and be met with presence, reverence, and warmth.  In addition to private clinical practice, Summer has served on faculty and is a facilitator with the wisdom school, Kinward.

A lifelong student of consciousness and the soul’s unfolding, Summer integrates perennial wisdom teachings with somatic inquiry, breathwork, and contemplative practice. Her work is rooted in the recognition that the body and the earth hold an innate intelligence—an ever-present field of support—waiting to be remembered.

She is curious about human development, wisdom ways of knowing, and consciousness. She continues her own inner work through the Diamond Approach founded by A.H. Almaas, where she loves working with spiritual practice of inquiry.  Summer has been a student of the Enneagram under the teaching of Russ Hudson since 2010 and completed her training through the Enneagram Institute in 2019.

She is deeply influenced by the grief-tending vision of Francis Weller, whose teachings on the “Five Gates of Grief” inspire her seasonal grief rituals and retreats. She views becoming apprentices to our grief as essential to reclaiming our authentic hearts and cultivating more life-honoring ways of being.

Her ongoing studies and inspirations include the wisdom of Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Tara Brach, Russ Hudson, Richard Rohr, Maya Luna, Malidoma Somé, Phillip Shepherd, Daniel Foor, Linda Thai, and mystics across traditions.

Summer lives in her native North Carolina with her husband Kevin, their three children—Abby, Levi, and August—and a beloved menagerie of animals. Whether guiding a grief ritual, facilitating embodied inquiry, or simply walking beneath the trees, she remains devoted to the mystery of love made visible through presence.

To learn more about Summer click here and to read her statement on grief-tending click here.

Statement on Diversity and Inclusivity
As facilitators, our intention is to create an inclusive space that honors all cultures and ethnicities. However, as white-bodied, cisgender women, we recognize the privilege and systemic advantages inherent in our identities and recognize that the racial lenses and gendered systems that have shaped our experiences and perspectives differ significantly from those of BIPOC individuals. We are dedicated to actively listening, learning, and unlearning, and we are committed to ongoing growth as facilitators in this area. May our collective grief cry serve as a catalyst for change and liberation, as we work towards dismantling oppressive systems and creating a world where all beings can thrive.

On cultural appropriation and ritual work:
In our work, we approach any rituals, songs, or practices from non-dominant cultures with deep respect and gratitude. They have been shared and gifted with blessings to aid in our collective healing. We are committed to acknowledging and honoring the sources of these practices, recognizing the responsibility that comes with engaging with them.

Covid policy
Masking is optional, but discouraged given the nature of this work where we all rely on non-verbal cues to communicate and find safety. We do not request vaccination or testing prior to arrival. However if you are symptomatic within ten days prior to the program start date we ask that you please ensure that you are not contagious before arriving. This is a self-monitoring agreement and we trust in your personal integrity. Thank you.

Risk Disclosure Statement
Know that:
• Participation is voluntary.
• You may choose your level of engagement at all times.
• These activities do not replace therapy, counseling, or medical care.
• Individuals with a history of significant trauma, complex grief, PTSD, or medical/mental health conditions are encouraged to consult with a healthcare provider before attending.

Potential risks include, but are not limited to:
• Emotional discomfort, grief activation, or triggering memories
• Minor physical strain or fatigue from movement or ritual activities
• Exposure to natural elements (weather, uneven terrain, etc.)
• Interaction with other participants’ emotional expression, which may feel challenging
• Sensory experiences such as smoke, sound, or ritual materials

What past participants have said about our retreats: